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Topic: See (REALLY see) an engine running (Read 2263 times)

Interesting video showing how the combustion flame actually moves around in an engine. Well, I say "engine", it's a Briggs & Stratton - so not really an "engine" so much as a point source of frustration.

Many many years ago, in the late 1980s I think, I was lucky enough to get a trip around what used to be Shell's research centre at Thornton, near Ellesmere Port, UK. One of the most fascinating things they had there was a single cylinder engine with a quartz(?) porthole let into the head, so the boffins could observe - via high speed cameras - the flame front inside this engine. Unlike the Briggs in the video, this one had overhead valves. I never saw the engine, just one of the videos they'd taken. I must have been about 15 at the time, it was seriously fascinating. I've still got a book somewhere which has a still shot of the quartz window, with a flame crossing it.

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Cheers,Ade-- I'm just a poor old man. I have no time for law-breakers. My legs are grey. My ears are gnarled. My eyes are old and bent.

Years back, we had an IC engine used in the thermodynamics and heat transfer labs that had a quartz cylinder. Once it was running you could see the combustion throughout the cylinder chamber though the head was metal. It was interesting to see what happened as you went from a "rich" to a more lean fuel air mixture. It was very obvious that the flame became more yellow-ish with a richer mixture, and then more blue-ish as it leaned out. The students loved it, but sadly it was replaced with a better instrumented apparatus with interchangeable gasoline and diesel engines connected to a water dyno.

Gives a good viewpoint on flame travel in flathead engines where flame front makes the dog leg travel horizontally from valves to vertically over piston then. No wonder OHV design was a big improvement in power production for engines.